The Rise and Fall of Telltale

Hello, my fellow gamers! My name is Santiago Brion, and today I will be talking about the beginning and end of the video game studio, Telltale Games. Telltale has been making so many great games and it's such a shame that their run had to end due to controversy among developers, and so let's take a dive into the rise and fall of Telltale Games

In the beginning, LucasArts was the biggest name in adventure platform games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Sam & Max. When LucasArts decided to end their adventure genre games for some reason until Disney bought LucasArts in 2012. In 2004, LucasArts developers, Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander left LucasArts and made their studio in the form of Telltale Games so that they can make the adventure/episodic games that they've always wanted, becoming a big powerhouse in the gaming industry. 

In 2005, Telltale released a poker game called Texas Hold Em. Between 2006 and 2009, Telltale revived previous LucasArts properties like Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island. The revived Sam & Max game, Sam & Max Save the World proved that people still wanted to play point & click adventure games and so, Telltale had set out to search for new IPs to keep their popularity afloat. Tales of Monkey Island proved to be a great success, and then Telltale branched out to well-known titles like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park was a glitchy mess with great moments but didn't live up to the movies while the Back to the Future game was great. 

Now, beloved as Sam & Max was, Telltale is best known for their most successful IP that has tragically led to their downfall, The Walking Dead. Those games were lightning in a bottle! For a game that was released in 2012, it's still playable to this on day on next-gen consoles. At the height of the zombie craze of the 2010s, the game followed Lee as he becomes a father figure to a young girl named Clementine during an outbreak. Teaching her survival skills that she'd later use in future sequels. The Walking Dead started a formula where you'd have to make difficult decisions on who to save and every critical choice that can impact your status as a Telltale player. 

In 2013, The Wolf Among Us was released to cult status and critical acclaim. Besides The Walking Dead, Telltale released games were profitable like The Wolf Among Us and Minecraft: Story Mode. So, what happened was that Telltale ended up hiring so many employees to make more money for their staff. This wasn't coming from their profits but from their investor partners who were providing the license for the games. The studio was neck deep into a business model and ended having nearly 400 employees. Which as you can imagine that this was a case of gross mismanagement and crunch time to keep developing their games. Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands were all built on a game engine that was dated. Most games had bugs and glitches. 

During the making of The Walking Dead: The Final Season, developers Jake Rodkin, Olly Moss and Nels Anderson left Telltale to make their own studio, Campo Santo, where they've made the 2016 game Firewatch. The fact that Telltale had so many employees to make bigger games was a big concern for many to gain more money and critical reviews.

On September 21st, 2018, an investor backed out at the last minute and Telltale Games officially shut down with 90% of its staff laid off without pay. Without any warning or severance, these employees only had 30 min. to leave to carry every possession that they had with them. A class-action lawsuit was made against what was left of Telltale for abuse of work labor and not paying any notice or severance.

After Telltale was dead, many developers were hired to finish what they've left off. The Walking Dead: The Final Season was finished by Skybound Games and the planned The Wolf of Among Us 2 was canceled but is back in development under their relaunch from LCG Entertainment. Other titles weren't so lucky. Game of Thrones second season was canceled and the planned Stranger Things game was also canceled. Hopefully with LCG, Telltale can live on. 

And so, Telltale Games came from humble beginnings and were caught up in their own fame by completely mismanaging their staff with an old business model that have led to glitchy games with zero financial stability. It was only a matter of time until Telltale Games was finished.

Thank you for reading and don't forget to comment below your thoughts.


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